Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

This week in tech saw a lot of open jaws and head shaking from observers like me.  This week, I’ll point out the top four moves that makes me suspect drugs may have played a role in their decision to move them to the light of day.  Here in tech, things move pretty fast; if you don’t stop and point out the crack heads, you could miss them.

This week:

• “We can squeeze one more release from Windows Mobile 2003”
• AT&T really hates iPhone users?
• Wireless power is here, do you want it?
• Flash on your phone; whether you like it or not<

Windows Mobile 6.5 embarrasses WinMo fans

Ouch!  Windows Mobile fans all over waited for October 6, the heralded release date for the new Windows Mobile 6.5.  Unfortunately, bloggers saw the release a bit differently.  From my post earlier this week:

ZD Net: “...(I) would never recommend anyone actually purchase a new device just to get this update on their smartphone.”
Slashgear says, “Enterprise users will likely find this latest version a decent mixture of the familiar and the new, but Windows Mobile 6.5 still falls short of a knock-out blow against webOS, Android and the iPhone.”
From Engadget: “...it’s very much a stopgap, complete with duct tape, bubble gum, and Bondo.”

For an update that took 18 months to put together, the effort seems less than stellar.  Windows Mobile 7, while looking impressive in pre-production form, is still months off (2010 delivery expected).  So what is a WinMo fan to do?  Here is my top three gems of advice for WinMo fans while they wait for the big 7:

• Stop reading blogs.  Bloggers are all jaded and get free iPhones from Apple in exchange for being fanbois anyway.
• Buy an Android phone for the interim.  It’s not like Google is profiting from it.
• Rethink how much you need a cell phone.  Give it up for a year, tell everyone it is an experiment, you’ll look cooler.  You hipster, you.

AT&T to kill the golden goose?

Let’s say you are a farmer and your prize pig, who earns you a pretty penny at the county fair, is eating up all your feed intended for all the farm animals.  What is a farmer to do?  That seems to be the pickle Higgins from Magnum PI, er, Ralph de la Vega finds himself in.  Our Sue Walsh explains:

“...it certainly sounds like price increases on data plans, data caps or throttling could be in store for the future.  While such moves may certainly ease the burden placed on the network, it will most certainly anger iPhone users, many of who are already unhappy. “

Predictably, iPhone users are up in arms over the concept.  Unlimited should mean unlimited, right?  If AT&T wasn’t clever enough to realize that voice was secondary on the device, isn’t that their fault?  Data is king and you are married to it, AT&T.  You reap what you sow.

Powermat ought to scare somebody (else)

I was thrilled with Palm Pre’s Touchstone device that allows the phone to be charged just by placing it on the small toadstool charger.  I am less thrilled with the latest wave of wireless charging mats that everyone is so excited about.  Our Editor, Iyaz reviewed the mat and had this to report:

“If you buy into the Powermat universe, purchase the Powermat home & office mat or travel mat and have an iPhone, this is very handy.  Keeping your phone charged is incredibly easy since you don’t need to search for a fallen iPod cable. “

Your iPhone would have to be in a special case to allow this charging, as do all of the devices you want to charge, that or you have to plug in a wireless adapter prior to charging on the mat.  If you are going to that much trouble, wires seem a bit easier (and cheaper) to me.  Yes, wires are so 1980s but this isn’t the wireless power revolution we’ve been waiting for.  The genius of the Palm Pre method, being designed to do this from conception, seems like a much better path than add-ons.  But that is just one crackheads opinion.  Are you loving these things?

I am worried, largely thanks to my ignorance.  Iyaz left off splash tests.  What if I toss a kitchen magnet at it?  Will my microwave nuke the thing?  For that matter, is it microwave safe?  So many questions unanswered by Iyaz, you’ve got to wonder why he didn’t test out real-world scenarios like these…

Flash on your phone

This week, Adobe announced it was working with major mobile phone operating systems to get their Flash on more devices.  Notably, the iPhone OS was not mentioned by Adobe to be included leaving some to scratch their heads and whine a bit.  Conversation points quickly became mired in two areas: what will Flash support do to battery life and with HTML5, will we need Flash anyway?

Adobe answered concerns about battery life here, “in Active State with Video (i.e. you’re watching a Flash video), Adobe estimates battery life of 3.4 hours. Not fantastic, but enough to get through a movie on a plane with battery to spare. Of course, video isn’t the only thing Flash is used for, and when working with animation instead (e.g. many current Flash games) Adobe estimates that you could get up to 6.5 hours out of the phone. And if you turn down the screen brightness and turn off the radios? 14.5 hours.”

Many believe HTML5 adoption to most sites to be years off and until then Flash will be king.  Google is behind HTML5 in a big way and that is going to speed things up.  Tim O’Reilly casts this light:

“If you’re like me, you had no idea there was so much HTML 5 already in play. When I checked in with my editors at O’Reilly, the general consensus was that HTML 5 isn’t going to be ready till 2010. Sitepoint, another leading publisher on web technology, recently sent out a poll to their experts and came to the same conclusion. Yet Google, Mozilla, and Palm gave us all a big whack upside the head this morning. As Shakespeare said, “The hot blood leaps over the cold decree.” The technology is here even if the standards committees haven’t caught up. Developers are taking notice of these new features, and aren’t waiting for formal approval.”

Can Adobe keep Flash alive despite Safari, Chrome, Opera, and Firefox already support elements of HTML5 such as geolocation, video, app cache, and database functionalities?  I don’t have the answer but it would appear that the wave of HTML5 support is going to have an effect.

Of course, the tech is useless if we don’t use it, no matter what the crackheads say.  So far, America has yet to get really excited about mobile TV.  Slingbox has had some success here but I am not sure it has been a runaway, yet.  Major carriers are still in the early stages of releasing phones that can handle TV.  Honestly, I can’t find much to watch on my 42” much less my 3”.  You?